School finance debate further delayed

Gov. Sam Brownback said Tuesday he is still hopeful the Legislature will pass a bill to satisfy a recent court order on school financing before the upcoming break.

Public debate on that bill has been elusive, with the House Appropriations Committee postponing meetings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. But the committee chairman said informational school finance discussion will begin Wednesday morning, and Brownback said there is still time to get a bill done before April 5, when the Legislature breaks for more than three weeks before returning for veto session.

Brownback also said that one of the realities of the court decision is that his initiative to provide all-day kindergarten to all Kansas students has been shelved this session as attention shifts to providing enough money to satisfy the court order.

The Kansas Supreme Court released its decision March 7 finding the state wasn’t meeting its constitutional obligation to fund public schools equitably.

Since then Republican leaders have been negotiating the parameters of a bill to satisfy the court's order to provide equity, which could cost up to $129 million.

There was a hiccup in that process last week as a bill introduced by House Appropriations Committee chairman Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, included charter school expansion provisions that House Speaker Ray Merrick shouldn’t have been attached.

Merrick introduced a new proposal, House Bill 2774, on Tuesday. The pace of approval of that bill depends on reaching enough consensus on two questions: where should the equity funding come from and what policy-related strings should be attached.

The bill will need 63 House votes and 21 Senate votes without much likely cooperation from Democrats, who have generally been steadfast in advocating that the Legislature should quickly provide $129 million in new education funding with no strings attached.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said Republicans were over-complicating the response to the court order.

Rhoades said he would welcome Democratic votes on the school finance bill, but the minority party's current position of all new funding with no strings attached would be a non-starter for the Republican House majority.

Rhoades said getting the majority to agree to even $70-90 million in new annual funding is "going to be really hard" and so the amount of new money allocated versus the amount shifted from other sources to get to $129 million remains in flux.

"There's all kinds of things on the table about how do we minimize the new money, but how do we equalize," Rhoades said.

That leaves the leadership to carefully construct a house of cards that will have enough ancillary measures to attract the necessary Republican votes as is, or at least be stable enough to remain standing if some of the cards are removed.

"I think that analogy is very good," said Mark Tallman, a spokesman for the Kansas Association of School Boards.

Tallman said the bill to come before House Appropriations on Wednesday, House Bill 2774, doesn’t include the charter schools measure or a corporate tax credit for scholarships to private schools in last week's offer, but does have other conservative deal-sweeteners like loosening teacher licensing requirements for those with professional experience in science and math and doubling the number of designated "innovative districts" exempt from most state regulations.

The teacher licensing portion is anathema to the state's teacher's union, the Kansas National Education Association. And Tallman said his group, though supportive of the innovative districts idea in the past, would prefer to see the State Board of Education's concerns about the constitutionality of the program satisfied before it expands.

Other add-ons, like establishing an advisory board to study the adequacy of state funding under the standards proscribed by the Kansas Supreme Court this month could have broad support, Tallman said.

Still, any deal appears tenuous at best this week, and with only one week left before break, the possibility of devoting veto session time to school finance looms along with the court's July 1 deadline.

Tallman said in his year's of observing the Legislature it hasn’t been unusual to deal with weighty issues when the body returns in May and legislators are fortunate in that the veto session begins early this year.

"I don't think this is extraordinary yet," Tallman said. "It could get there."

Kelly said the behind-the-scenes negotiations with no guarantee of House and Senate approval once the bills become public was eerily similar to last year's Republican debate over tax policy, which dragged the 90-day session to 99 and into June.

"I think that's exactly what's going on behind closed doors here," Kelly said. "I just hope the result is not as disastrous as the tax bill."

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